I am the owner, or an agent authorized to act on behalf of the owner, of the copyrighted work described.

Download Presentation

PowerPoint Slideshow about 'Lettuce In Space' - halona

An Image/Link below is provided (as is) to download presentation

Download Policy: Content on the Website is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use and may not be sold / licensed / shared on other websites without getting consent from its author.While downloading, if for some reason you are not able to download a presentation, the publisher may have deleted the file from their server.

The purpose of the experiment is to see if lettuce will germinate in the International Space Station. After the experiment we will observe if microgravity will have a positive, negative, or neutral effect on growth. We will compare the sample from the ISS to our ground truth by observing germination from both tubes. If the lettuce germinates in microgravity astronauts can eat lettuce on long space flights. This will provide the astronauts with the opportunity to eat fresh vegetables while on extended space voyage.

Plant growth in space has been tried with corn. The corn did not respond well to microgravity. It has also been tried with soybeans. The soybeans thrived very well in microgravity. We want to try plant growth with lettuce. In space, plant roots grow in random directions, however, on Earth, the roots of plants grow down.

One day during the last 2 weeks aboard the station. The astronauts will unlatch the clamps holding back the section with the seeds and the section with water, and then shake for 1 minute. This will begin germination.

Two days before departure, the astronauts will unlatch a second clamp, releasing rubbing alcohol into the experiment. This will keep the plants from decaying on the trip down.

One issue we had was trying to get seed germination in just water. Due to very low germination rates we examined how much air was left in the tube after sealing. It was determined that the type of seed might be the cause for the low germination rates. Varying the seed types appeared to improve germination rates.